


O sea-starved, hungry sea

by StripySock



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Angst, Blow Jobs, First Time, M/M, Mini case fic, Selkies, Transformation
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-30
Updated: 2015-12-30
Packaged: 2018-05-10 06:06:43
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,373
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5573668
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/StripySock/pseuds/StripySock
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A case with a selkie turns into far more than the Winchesters had ever anticipated. Sam has to resist the urge of the sea, Dean's got to live with what might have to be done to hold him back from it.</p>
            </blockquote>





	O sea-starved, hungry sea

**Author's Note:**

  * For [quickreaver](https://archiveofourown.org/users/quickreaver/gifts).



> written for quickreaver for spn_j2_xmas . You had amazing prompts, and there were so many fics I wanted to write, but this is the one that happened. Many thanks to tebtosca for the extension. Title owed to Yeats.
> 
> Set in an alternate s7, after the events of s6

The wind nips through Sam's coat and bites at the exposed tip of his nose, the salt air whipping redness into his cheeks, draining it from his hands which he curls tighter into the linty lining of his pockets. He's wearing a scarf despite Dean's jeers, the knitted cotton folded into a loop around his jaw that has him breathing in warmish, recycled air, and serving double duty to hide a smile as Dean bitches unendingly about the cold through chattering teeth. Apparently scarves are one step too far, another bit of ammunition in what he likes — depending on the day, location and his general mood — to alternately call Sam's hippie, yuppy or college-kid mentality, though only ever under his breath these days. Sam's pretty sure that Dean doesn't actually think there's any contradiction in any of those things, quite possibly Dean thinks if Sam had a choice he'd be handweaving a yurt in a New York apartment while listening to Nirvana.

There's still a faint ache in his face, the stretched soreness of a jaw clenched against the cold, and Sam's pretty certain it's going to spread to his ears. He can already feel the pound of blood in his face, and he wishes that this one was a one-man job. Sam hates the cold with an intensity of emotion that still takes him by surprise, a flickering spark of dislike that doesn't seem to die, no matter what else does. If he examines it from the outside, it's logical, even neat, a cause and effect. A leftover piece from a too-near cage. Lucifer not only burns cold, but, well, Prince of Traitors, that's what he called Sam, and Sam knows his Dante, none better, has curled up with Judas top and tailed. From the perspective that Sam adopts, an anthropological poke at the exposed raw meat of his mind, it's a neat game of fit-the-pieces-together, and he slips off the thoughts as though they're Teflon coated, not enough to hurt.

It could be as simple as that, but Sam’s always hated the cold. He can remember winters as a kid, remembers day after fretful day, in Minnesota, Alaska, a parade of backwood towns, never warm enough, living in a perpetual state of running noses and chilblains, curling back to back with Dean, a personal furnace whose heat bled through Sam like a sniffling, human shaped electric blanket. That hurts more than the other thoughts, and Sam puts them back in their box, kicks at the gritty sand and white foam, thick scoops of it like whipped cream on the beach, and tries not to consider why he'd rather contemplate the devil and his works than his brother.    

His brother who is currently scrabbling with fingers that look wizened from the cold in the sand, until he unearths what looks like a thin piece of shale, and pauses for a moment to skim it across the restless water. Six skips, and Dean grins. "Shale's the best for it," he says with satisfaction. "We there yet?"

"Pretty much," Sam says, squinting against the wind, dashing water from his eyes. "There's the hut in front of us, like the dude said. Two miles out along the shore." He shifts his knife, feels the uneasy weight of it in his hand, hears the solid reassuring click of Dean readying his gun. There had been two deaths, each body with its back skinned, which wouldn't have sounded like anything in their line if it weren’t for a call, a tip-off about a man who came back from the sea with a black-haired, dark-eyed woman, whose teeth were white and sharp, who never swam, and whose tears were freshwater not salt.

"Sounds like a Kardashian," Dean had offered.

"Or a selkie," Sam pointed out, a more accurate if less exciting assessment.  

They'd put the pieces of the case together, and it's as bleak and sad as anything Sam's ever heard in his life. The man who'd done it had equivocated and lied, tried to shift every bit of blame, until Dean, who'd been looking at him like he was a piece of shit scraped off a shoe, had put it to him straight. The truth or they walked. He'd taken her pelt of course, hidden it in a safe place, and let her know she wasn't getting it back unless she did what he said, when he said it.

"So why hasn't she just killed you?" Dean had asked with whip sharp disdain, and the guy had flinched, as though he'd already thought of that.

"She was insane," he said. "Fucking loony. Used to bite herself at night, like she was trying to gnaw through her veins or something. Then about two weeks ago, she asked for her damn pelt back. Acted all sweet and nice about it, and when I said ‘no,’ just a little longer, she tilted her head to one side and asked if I'd swap instead. I told her she didn't have anything to swap with, and she went quiet and left. That night she killed Dane."

"Any reason she'd kill Dane?"

A flicker of hesitation, and Sam had leant forward. "The truth, Gary," he said, though he already knew it without asking. They'd caught her, the four of them, out in the ocean, peeled the skin from her, left her naked. There were ways to do that, all it took was some bullshit lore passed down from a grandfather who'd got his bride the same way, and people who'd actually try it out.

"We thought it was a joke," Gary said, as though that was the agreed upon lie, the way that the four of them had chosen to have it go down _All just a joke, no harm done_. "Didn't think it was real, might just be a laugh to find out. Now two of my friends are dead and me and Rich are next."

 

Now Dean's got the fur in his hand in a plastic bag, and Gary had spilt the location of the hut. Rich owned it; it was the first place they'd put her when they'd come back to shore, until they'd found clothes for her. He couldn't think of anywhere else he'd expect her to be. Anywhere that she'd know that he'd know.

Sam licks his lips, tasted the salt off them as they crack from the wind even through the scarf, and grips the knife more firmly.

The door opens almost by itself. There’s nothing but darkness inside, and a piece of it detaches and comes into the air before it resolves into a quantity of dark hair. Sam had expected her to be beautiful - but he hadn't expected something so fiercely, vitally alive, as though even without her skin or her freedom, she would fight until the death for what was hers.

"Give," she says, without questioning where Gary was or who they were. She was mostly naked, white gleaming body like a statue, swathed with long, long dark hair, so completely without shyness that clothes on her would've seemed like dressing up a leopard. In one hand she holds a small blade with a sharp upwards hook: a skinning knife.

As she looks at them, Sam realises, with a bite of sadness at how this would end, that if she'd been sane before, she no longer was anymore. "We're giving it," he says carefully, not knowing if she can understand, this far gone. "Dean, give it."

It wasn't what they'd planned, but alarms are going off inside Sam's head as well as a buzz of unpredictable fear under his skin. Dean glances at him and doesn't debate it, just tosses the bag at her feet.She looks at it with more longing than she can contain, almost vibrating with the need to touch it,  and snatches it from the ground, ripping through the plastic with her nails and her teeth, desperation made solid. With a twist, she tosses her head to the hut. "Yours," she says, guttural and almost un-understandable. Already she’s changing, dark grey flooding over her skin, eyes huge and liquid, more animal than human in any sense. If they are going to kill her, it'll have to be now.

"Jesus, what the fuck," comes from behind them, and Sam turns to see a nauseated face staring at the selkie. "What the hell is it doing?"

The selkie hisses, every line of her rapidly disintegrating form breathing menace, the knife still clutched in her hand. She lets out a sound, a disintegrated bark of hate, and runs for the newcomer who ducks behind Sam for a human shield. When she lashes out, it’s as though she no longer cares who or what she kills, pain and hate fuelling her. Sam catches at her hand, feels the inhuman strength of her struggle as she looks at her captive arm and bends, teeth flashing, to worry at Sam's hand.

Dean shoots her then, as Sam lets go involuntarily, face twisting as though, even now, he didn't want to. He stands in silence over her body as the man hiding behind Sam begins with the recriminations and explanations and lies that they've already heard once from Gary. Sam’s too busy trying to stem the bleeding to give any response, and he feels Dean take him by the arm and pull him towards the edge of the water, ignoring the now-hysterical Rich. There’s nowhere Sam would rather be further from right now than the wide open sea where the selkie had been trying so hard to return.

He sinks down at Dean's pressing, lets Dean submerge his hand in the coldness of the sea, feels the sting of salt on the teeth marks she'd left, where she’d bitten so deep that she'd almost reached the bone. He wonders if he's in shock - everything seems muted and muffled, a thick heavy dampener on the sound of the sea, of the crying, on everything except the thump in his chest and the sound of Dean's breath.

"Might not be a good idea," he says, and even his tongue feels muzzy. "Sea water isn't as clean as you'd think."

Dean glances upwards. "No whisky," he says, smile aborted before it begins. He wraps a makeshift bandage around it and guides Sam further away from the water, touch strangely gentle on his arm, as though he knows that Sam isn't really there. It's the only way Sam can put it. It's pretty peaceful, feels like this is the first time he's been alone in his head in too long, white noise blanking everything out.

Dean goes back and drags out the old rowboat, bullies Rich into helping him lift her in. It's not the boat they'd used to find her, just a summer boat for the kids as Rich tells him, but there's enough room for what they have to do. The selkie is a seal again, nothing human about her, defenseless and still. Sam watches as Dean rows out, Rich shivering opposite him, watches him lower her into the water, far enough out that maybe her kin will find her.

By the time Dean's back, the shock's worn off, and his arm begins to hurt in earnest, a dull, aching pain that throbs in time with his heart, as though her teeth are still buried inside . Every step jogs it a bit, and Sam grits his teeth and endures, although the cold on the way back bites even harder, seems to find an entrance even deeper into him through the gnawed flesh of his arm and sets up residence in his veins. Back at the motel room, Dean pours whiskey over the wound, a habit he's never broken and that Sam's given up protesting, before he washes it, puts on antiseptic, and covers the bite with a clean white bandage. Sam doesn't even like to think what sort of germs a selkie might carry. The sense of unreality hits again even harder as Dean finishes fixing him up, and he finds himself staring at Dean's face: the tiny worn lines, the way he bites at his lip in concentration; then his attention moves, with an odd kind of wonder, to the strong bend of Dean's nose, the line of his jaw, as though it's all new. Dean gives him a flat look, as though he thinks Sam's overplaying it now, takes a step backwards, and gives his arm a pat.

 

Sam doesn't eat dinner, can't stomach the thought of it, and instead turns in early and tries to sleep, tries not to remember the desperate look of joy on the selkie's face when it had seen the fur, or the flap of skin they'd found in the hut, as though she'd painstakingly crafted a replacement pelt of human skin to buy her freedom with. They chase around his mind though, and it's a long time before he sleeps. When he wakes, only a little later, he can hear Dean's soft breathing in the bed next to him, fast asleep, a small blessing given how badly Dean's been sleeping lately. The second thing that strikes him, is how  _cold_ it is. It's not a supernatural cold, no pocket in the room or ghost chill, it's just completely and utterly freezing. The radiator when he touches it is icy, and when he tracks down the night clerk, he gets a sleepy explanation that the furnace system is broken, but she can find him some extra blankets if he wants.

 

It's better than nothing, and he tosses an extra one on Dean as well, who mumbles something and turns over. Sam lies there and shivers, long slow shudders that start at his shoulders and make their way down to his legs, coming in waves. He's contemplating either sharing with Dean, which he'll never hear the fucking end about, or giving up and going to the car and turning on the heater enough to defrost himself enough to stay alive. Dean makes the choice for him by turning over. "We're almost out of gas," he says blearily. "Shift over." He drags his blankets over and spreads them over Sam then gets in, presses his back to Sam, and appears to drop off.

 

Sam knows Dean isn't asleep — not just because he's thoroughly aware that Dean's idea of faking sleeping is regular breathing with occasional snores, when in fact Dean doesn't snore unless he's drunk — but because they're next to each other and it’s hard to lie that close, in both senses of the word. Dean's just trying not to make this awkward, which Sam appreciates - they've done it before when things have been pressing, but it never really gets easy as such. Talking isn't what he wants to do right now anyway, he's desperate for sleep.

Dean's warmth is spreading, and Sam would like to rotate and take advantage of it, but he can imagine Dean's expression at the thought, and the thought gives him a laugh. He's not sure exactly when he sleeps, but when he wakes up, he's warm. At some point during the night, they'd both turned, and the first thing Sam sees when he wakes up is Dean gently drooling on his pillowed arm, restful in sleep, though he's frowning to himself as though trying to figure something out and failing. The room is still icy, but it's early enough that Sam can justify getting up. He quietly slips out - Dean wakes automatically but drifts back off when he's ascertained that it's only Sam and not a girl who might want morning sex.  He yanks the keys from Dean, takes the Impala for a spin to fill up on gas, and get a couple of cups of coffee, basking in the indiscriminate blow of the heater and the satisfaction of the first cup of coffee. He brings back two for Dean as well, and a croissant, just to piss Dean off. There's no hot water either, and he settles for a change of clothes, pausing as he peels off his socks.

There's sand in them. It's not the coarse kind from yesterday, and besides he'd changed socks since then. It's a very fine, silvery kind of sand, almost powdery. It's between his toes, dusting the bottom of his feet. When he stands, it shakes off and lies on the floor. He licks suddenly dry lips and tastes salt on them. His arm gives a deep, vicious throb, and he clutches at it by instinct. Sand gets everywhere, he rationalises, there's nothing innocuous about it. He brushes it around with his foot, stares at where Dean's blearily beginning to start the morning, and slowly pulls on his socks. The warmth is welcome, the Impala even more so, and the sight of Dean taking them out of town even more than that. Sam won't miss the windchill, the long slow sigh of the sea, or the crushed, concertina quality of the beach.

The next morning he wakes with sand in his bed and a wet pillow, salty as though he's cried in his sleep, but far too much. He doesn't disturb Dean over in the next bed, shakes out the sheets into the trashbin, and then sits down to unwind the bandage from his arm. The teeth marks are red and sore but not infected. He thinks they look a little more healed than maybe they should, but both he and Dean have always mended fast if not thoroughly. It's another set of scars to add, ones that'll quietly fade. He touches it, traces his fingers lightly over where she'd sunk desperate teeth in, a trapped animal who needed to escape, and remembers the half-human, half-sealness of her face as she melted back into what had been stolen from her. He can remember the inhuman agony of her realisation that he wasn't going to let go, wasn't going to let her kill.

He feels the creak of his bones, older than they should be. They sound like timbers in a storm, unable to take the swell, and he turns and cracks the bones of his back, sharp little sad pistol shots in the quiet of the room, then sinks his head down to stare at the white jut of his knees in the gloom. He should tell Dean. Not telling him shit, not being told shit, it's screwed them both too many times to count, but he can't find the words, the way to say _I might be changing_. If it's not some strange curse that's coincidentally following them, then there's only one thing it can be. He thinks of the endless, restless swell of the sea, an alien impenetrability, the force of the waves in his dreams, and can find nothing in him that wants it.

_Perhaps that'll come later,_ he thinks, and it makes him shiver and draw a jacket closer.

He doesn't tell Dean. Not yet. He'll tell him soon, when he knows something more. Instead he props up the laptop, pretends to case-hunt, reads every bit of lore on selkies, and finds nothing of any use. Selkies are born, not made, every site tells him. They're seal-folk who shed their skins, not humans who put them on. A selkie on land isn't human, can't speak or reason or understand except in the most rudimentary way, a worthless consent, a concealed hate that bubbles out when it can. Sam's pretty sure that's not true at all. The woman they'd seen, she could speak, could think, could bargain. He wonders if they're just so strange that it's easier to call them inhuman, as though what humans did was any better.

_I'm changing,_  he practices without words, in the side mirror of the car. _Into something rich and strange,_ adds inconsequential memories of eighth grade English, the cadence caught in his head, running with the wheels, a repeated variation on Sam's scattered thoughts. He wants to put it better. He toys with _I'm becoming something different,_  which though it has the merit of truth, sounds voluntary, or like he wants to join a religious order. The rest of him wants to halve the burden, share the load, open up and say what pride won't let him. _Help me. Help me_. They're not words he ever says to Dean, or that Dean vouchsafes to him in turn, but they join the pearls and awkward speeches in the steady rhythm of the car, settles into his blood regardless of the Def Leppard that covers up Dean's own oblique thoughts.

 

He notices that he drinks more water, seven empty bottles at his feet in hours, symptom of a raging thirst that has Dean giving him a long, slow look that holds too much thought in it to be at all comfortable. He can taste the salt of his mouth and his skin, almost believes he can smell it off himself - a fresh clean sea smell, like a breeze over the headland. It's only the faintest whiff, perhaps the power of suggestion more than anything, but Dean's nose flares as well, as though detecting the discordant note in the scent map that makes up their lives.

 

"So, you're turning into a selkie," Dean says, conversationally almost, the next night after Sam swept out sand, hung sheets up to dry,and  inspected his eyes for the round blackness of a seal's. He's putting on his shoes, and Sam is faced with the intense, unwilling thought that this was, after all, how he'd wanted it to happen. It hasn't been exactly subtle, what's been happening, Sam hasn't made a great deal of attempts to hide it, and God knows that’s a skill he’s developed over the years.

 

Dean's brutally willing to whip off the band aid, and he's just as fast to make it up to Sam, tender vein of repressed sentiment that Dean would rather pretend doesn't exist at all. It deals a blow to Sam's still fragile self image to know that he can still come running and extend a knee to big brother, and he meanly thinks of the way Dean's been hurt at Sam’s hand because of it, an ignoble patch on damaged pride. Dean wears the marks of what their family's done to him on the outside, a quavering, unrenouncable position on protecting Sam at all cost, all price, no matter what it does to either of them. Sam wears it on the inside, carved inside his skin, the knowledge that he can, despite every instinct to break away and free himself, still avail of it.

 

All the practiced phrases vanish. "Yeah," he says and stares at Dean's boots, the worn toes and knotted laces, easier than Dean's face, until fierce, stubborn fury makes him look up. He's done nothing wrong. Told no lies. It's more than Dean can say. He's just in time to catch the last trace of the fear on Dean's face. Conversely, it grounds him. "I'm not going to leave," he says, and pretends that he doesn't know what that means. "I'm not going, Dean."

"Well you're not that fond of deep water," Dean says, tossing back a conversational ball like being open is too hot to handle. "Though maybe you'll get lucky. They might crown you their princess." His hands tell a different story than his mouth, sitting loosely on his thighs, a little bit open, a lot empty like they should be holding something, a gun, a knife, Sam. That last thought is easy to bat away. Sam's had practice, more than he likes to think. Intrusive thoughts, the counsellor he'd tried for thirty minutes and thirty seconds at Stanford, had told him. They happen to everyone, it's normal, if often an expression of anxiety. Sam hadn't said what they were about, but left with the clear, certain knowledge that that wasn't what they were. It's an awkward, ugly little remnant of hero worship that’s never had any healthy expression. He's pretty sure of that, doesn't let it bother him. Most of the time.

"Sure," he says. "Now help me figure out how to fix this before I start eating seaweed."

"Fish," Dean corrects. "And shellfish. Seals ain't no vegetarians, Sammy."

"Dream number one dashed," Sam says straight faced, then laughs at Dean's face. Somewhere deep down in Dean, deeper than anything Sam's got going on, Sam's pretty sure that Dean's terrified of him becoming a vegetarian. Sam would like to think it's worry over protein deficiency, but he's fairly sure that Dean wouldn't be able to handle that close a degree of kinship to something one step away from a hippy.

Research gives Dean the same ten sites that Sam got. Selkies are secretive. The people who take them alive don't usually talk about it, and for good reason. As far as they can figure, like most magical bullshit, it's all linked to the moon. In this case, it's the dark of the moon. Which gives them ten days more before presumably Sam's overcome with the urge to cast himself into the sea and hope like hell he grows a skin. Sam's already sounded Bobby out on this, and the response is less than encouraging. He'll keep looking, because the alternative is asking Cas, and none of them want to do that. Not the way that things have been going in that quarter. But selkies, Bobby says, like everyone else. Selkies aren't made. He's never heard of a bite passing it on. Dean likes the idea of a were-selkie, and Sam pretends to listen because the alternative is worse.

By common consent, they've circled back round to the sea, in a motel a little nicer than the usual, windows towards the shore because something in it has started tugging at Sam. Even the weather seems less bitter, and in between desperate research and endless phone calls in the closest thing to a hunter whip round that they've ever seen, Sam sits on a harbour wall and looks out into the distance until Dean, filled with a cold rage that only shows in glimpses, drags him away. It only lasts a few hours before Sam's drawn back. After a bit, Dean stops trying and sits next to him instead.

There's not really many more changes. He still wakes up salty and sandy, in need of somewhere else to sleep. Dean's taken to making space for him automatically after that first night, hardly even grumbles about it. Sam's pretty sure the motel maids think that he's some crazy swimmer who thinks icy cold water is a great wakeup call, but so far generous tipping has stopped the questions in their tracks. If he were still a kid, Sam might think that the one ineluctable bonus point to almost certain death or transformation is the sudden free flow of money, courtesy of Bruce Kilmeister's card. Now he'd take the occasional night in the car for an answer, for an alleviation of the bone deep fear in Dean's face when he thinks Sam isn't looking.

"Are you afraid for me?" Sam asks on their fifth night, no closer to an answer. Dean is a solid form beside him on the wall, scarf pulled grudgingly over his face, his sole concession to the cold.

"That's the stupidest fucking question I've ever heard," Dean says. He sounds almost surprised, as though he'd never thought that Sam could scrape these particular depths. "I mean that honestly. And I've had someone ask me if going down on me could get them pregnant."

 

_Afraid for me_ , Sam says inside his head, _or just don't want to lose me_. He doesn't say it, the answer makes no difference at all, and it'd be cruel. Sam's keeping a handle on that these days. Extra miles between him and Lucifer. Instead he shrugs, lets Dean read into that what he wants, watches the deep shadowed sea lap against the shore, an insatiable darkness. He can see it better than Dean can, can almost guess that somewhere out there, bright, intelligent eyes are watching him right back. He wonders if with their sharp, sharp teeth, they'll eat him alive in punishment.

 

He wakes that night to Dean shaking him, pulling him out of the flooded bed, the sheets dripping sullenly onto the floor, the thick heavy scent of the sea hanging in the air, tang of it in his mouth. The last time they had to do this, Sam was six and so ashamed he couldn't speak, and Dean was promising to never, ever tell Dad, and that he could absolutely get them dried, he just needed to skip school and ask the downstairs lady nicely. They wring the sheets into the shower, field strip the bed and try to dry out the mattress, without speaking a word because it doesn't need to be said that this can't go on. Yet it does, for two more days. Sam sleeps in the ridiculously cramped little bath, and misses the warmth of Dean more than he can say. Bobby comes through though, like a champ.

 

Sam takes the call outside, though Dean gives him an incredulous look that tells him they're going to talk about that - Dean's version of a talk, where he talks, Sam listens, and nothing gets resolved. He's got a feeling he's going to need to process this first. Bobby's kind. Too kind. It sets Sam right up for a feeling of disaster. Bobby makes a meal out of _why_ ; first off, tells him some bullshit about the salt in the blood, how the sea gets to call her own if she wants them, soft-soapy bullshit that neither of them are taken in by. "Only one thing stops it Sam," he says, and there's sympathy in his voice. "You've got to  _want_  to stay. You've gotta want it so damned bad, it'll kill you to go. Doesn't matter who. Can even be a what. Your job. Your wife. Family. Something so strong that if you take it to the sea, it's too much for it to swallow."

 

Sam pictures the vast, empty miles of ocean, storm tossed under skies of slate grey. Something so big the sea can't absorb or hold it. "Dean's enough," he says, and it's true, a truth he never thought he could bear to say aloud, not even to family like Bobby's become. But Sam's drowning in salt water, and his fingernails are thickening, darkening, and he hasn't needed to shave in a week. If Dean was enough, this wouldn't be happening.

Bobby is decent enough to give that answer a grave. "I don't doubt you," he says, "but Sam, you got to know, there's nothing else. Maybe it ain't how much you feel, it's how much you let yourself feel it." There's a frustrated snort on the other end of the line. "You got me sounding like a self help book. Sam, there is nothing else. Nothing. So figure that shit out."

Telling Dean is as painful as Sam thought it would be. He dresses it up all neatly, reasonably, but Dean steers unerringly through the shit and picks out the pearls. "You want to die?" he asks incredulously. "Is this what it's about? Some kind of death wish. Want to let the sea take you?" He makes it sound filthy, and there's the slightest thread of contempt that stings like sea salt in a wound, rouses Sam to fury, all of this too close to home. They argue, pointless and virulent, and Sam leaves, spends the night walking from pillar to post, the sound of the sea in his ears, a remorseless boom. The next day brings no apologies, and Sam spends most of it with paper cups of coffee, trying to put a logical framework on something that wants no truck with it. He wants to stay. He wants it so damn badly that it hurts, the thought of the darkness, the empty solitary deep an adequate push to Dean's pull. He doesn't how to want anything more than this, wonders if even this, more than he's felt in months, is enough, if it's a pathetic parody of how actual people feel. He doesn't trust anything he is anymore, any diagnosis he gives himself. Soullessness is still lurking so close.

He's not surprised that Dean suggests the obvious. They run. Away from the sea. Any body of water at all really, including especially large puddles. It's not a long term solution but it buys them time. Sam knows though, like something that's part of a new, slowly opening instinct, that it doesn't matter. If he becomes a seal, it'll happen no matter where he is. Dean doesn't need to be heaving him into bath tubs so Sam doesn't choke to death. They haven't talked about what happens afterwards; Sam because he has no idea what he'll feel, Dean because that would be like giving up. Sam's got a pretty good hope that he'll be able to come out of the sea like a regular selkie, take off his skin and walk on land.

As it happens, two days before the end, Dean brings it up himself. "If we don't stop this," he says, and he isn't looking at Sam, or anywhere close. "I'm not keeping your skin. Don't do it to me. You don't want to stay enough, you don't make me responsible for making you want the sea every day of your life."

Everything Sam wants to say chokes him, and he can't say any of it, all of it tangled with pain and anger, because the lie drips with such perfect truth from Dean’s lips. _I want to stay,_  he says to himself. He wants it so bad that it hurts like almost nothing he's ever felt before, exquisite knife edge torture of the soul that Lucifer never managed to such perfection, though he was an expert with the filleting blades. He's pretty sure that if he got any words out at all, they'd be "fuck off" and he manages to keep those in at least. Dean wouldn't take it the right way.  


At what Sam's mentally termed  _T-one Hour_ , the night of true darkness, they're on the beach. Sam's fielding a final call from Bobby and clicks off before any last goodbyes. If this doesn't work. If this doesn't get pulled off, and Sam becomes a seal, well, Bobby will know where to find him. Sam doesn't take off his sneakers. Doesn't discard his jacket or strip down to his final form, even as the urge begins to take him, the dark pull that clutches at his heart, slides freezing fingers into his gut and tugs, drags him forward far enough that he's knee deep in water so cold, he's worried it'll stop his heart before anything else. Dean's right alongside him, water a little higher on him, but now isn't the time to laugh at that.

"Fight it," he says, voice low, but Sam hears it over the pounding of the sea in his ears, the swish-swish he's no longer sure is his own blood or the wash of the ocean. Dimly he wonders if the sea will be enough to drown Lucifer, to force him out and crush the mess of what he’s done to Sam. "C'mon Sammy. Stay." There's something in his voice that he'd never let out otherwise, and Sam wants so bad to step backwards, but he's pulled forward, up to his waist now, as though the thought of oblivion is somehow more attractive now.

"I can't," he says, and to himself, he still sounds six years old and terrified. _Believe me Dean, I can't._

"Stop being such an asshole Sam," Dean says. "This is some bullshit self punishment ritual. Tell it to let you go. Step back." He's up to his waist now, and his hand is on Sam's arm, pulling him back, steady and sure. The tide tugs at them both, an insistent pressure that comes in waves, almost pulls them off their feet. Sam concentrates as hard as he can, even the bit of his brain that used to decimate demons, but there's nothing to fight here. Nothing to hurt. He can't stop the sea, a second King Cnut. In the very little bit of light there is, he can see the milk paleness of Dean's face, and the despair in his shoulders, none of which is in his voice now, authoritative, insistent.

Sam thinks he'll never know to the end of his life, if it was the wave that makes him stumble, or his desperation, to stay with Dean, even at the cost of having Dean the way he's had him all of his life. He gambles on Dean wanting him alive, even broken and fucked up little this, than having him walk out into the sea. Whatever it is, he clutches Dean close, and Dean looks at him, and it's easier to kiss him than it is to hold back.

There's only salt on Dean's mouth, lips cracked and chill from the cold, unmoving and breathless, a dead man's mask, but the sea lets go of Sam, takes back the tendrils it wound through him these last two weeks, an abandoning and emptying, a removing of things he didn't even realise he'd been filled with. It’s an animating force withdrawn, and replaced finally with the way Dean clutches Sam so tight that tomorrow he'll bruise like a rainbow, the only sign that he's still alive, not some dead thing the sea has cast up as being no longer its own. The second sign of life is Dean kissing him back, warmth of his mouth opening, a shared desperate gasp of life renewed - a perverted kiss of resurrection.

They stumble out of the water like it'll tempt fate to stay even a little longer, both soaked through, and Sam's fingernails have sheared off, almost down to flesh, hands tender and sore, newborn. They stumble and fall on the rough shore, Dean beneath him, stony rubble of the beach at his back, and fingers like iron on Sam’s skin. Sam thinks he could die like this, not feel the lack, because he’s feeling more than he’s felt in years. He settles for pushing his hips into Dean’s, dick soft in soaked jeans, just motion enacted, a ritual of movement as though to affirm that it wasn’t just a seconds long madness.

 

Dean gets them back to the motel, more through luck than any skill, and starts the frantic rush to get their wet clothes off, crumpled on the floor in sad little heaps, which surprises a laugh out of Sam, and the pain in his hands, the pain in his knees, the sweet tender waking of the rest of him, they keep Lucifer at bay more surely than anything, more surely than the sea.

 

There's every question that should get asked, but they've been abandoned with the clothes. Sam’s not ready to have this snatched away, and Dean touching with sheer greed, a possession that for once doesn't raise prickles of antagonism on Sam's skin. Something in him that's been dead and dormant too long stretches itself out, and while Dean grips his teeth into Sam's neck, licks the salt from his skin, kisses warm and wet as much of Sam as he can reach, Sam sees for a long second the reason the sea took him so far before it gave him back. He's been so fucking empty, squashed everything so deep down that he hadn't felt anything at all. Dean, Bobby, Cas, their work, what he has to call his own in however small a capacity, had been hypotheticals. Knowing he felt something, wasn't the same as feeling it first hand - he’s had all too long an experience of that with soul shared out and lost. Just as having Dean curl his hand, hot and eager around his dick, is an entirely different specimen to jerking off to the thought of it.

 

That revelation gets wiped out by the way that Dean moves, demands response, reciprocation. Tomorrow they're going to have the mother of all freak outs, but it's a Winchester specialty to leave long term planning to other people. As it is, Sam wrestles them both into an impossibly small shower so they can get the worst of the chill off their skin, watches clean, fresh water wash the ocean off Dean, lets his hands follow the fall of the water, relaxing under the meagre amount of hot water that he's getting himself. Dean seems to feel much the same way, dick heavy between his thighs, and it’s an inevitable force that pushes Sam down to the ground to his knees. On some instinct, Sam opens his mouth, and even over the dull rattle of the shower, he can hear Dean’s seized breath, see the flex of his thighs as he jerks forward, and then back.

 

Sam would, God he would, if Dean would let him, but Dean’s hands are in his hair, holding him back, and Sam can feel every tremor in his hands, the push-pull of want and shouldn’t. He does the decent thing and takes that choice away. Tucks his head against Dean’s thigh, because he doesn’t know how to say what he wants, anymore than Dean can. Just lets the water run over his face, too close back to the sea for one ugly second, Dean’s fingers in his hair. This he can give, until they walk the line between them better. He lets Dean wash his hair for him instead, rubbing soapy fingers down his back, an open appreciation that’s foreign to his face and native to his hands.

Towelled roughly dry, pink and scraped from sand and flannel, naked, they end up together on a bed, stall for too long, moment dying until Sam nips Dean savagely on a shoulder left too close, and provokes a fight that feels more natural. If Sam thought about it, it might cast a different shadow on all the ways they’ve touched throughout the years, faint shadows of excuses, a hunger for nearness that they can’t be honest about, but he doesn’t think at all. Folds his arms around Dean and feels the irritated chuff of his brother reminded once again that Sam’s reach is always longer, even if Dean’s grasp is stronger. Hip against hip, not alone on the other end of the bed, it seems simple now to rub and touch, to kiss with the infinite hunger of the sea behind him, a reminder of how big this thing is, can be.

He wants, more than anything, to show Dean everything he wants - both to give and take, even to articulate some of the poorly held back floods of thoughts that’ve formed more of his sexuality than he’d like to think about, but Dean fights shy and strange at first, as though Sam might regret this if he has to think about Dean’s cock in anything more than the abstract, comes back again and again to kiss, bites at Sam’s mouth, and Sam scores straight lines down to Dean’s skin to mirror what Dean’s done to him. He’s done with wilful misunderstandings between them, the artificial conflict that’s darkened them too long.

When he finally gets his hands on Dean’s dick and his mouth on the crease of Dean’s thigh, the cut of his hips, he gets Dean begging for it wordlessly, like Sam’s mouth on his cock might stop Sam from laying him out and taking him apart instead of facilitating it. It’s a new thing to tease - to nip across the dip of Dean’s belly, to hold him down - pressure first on Dean’s wrists, then his hips, and then Sam looking up and asking him not to move, to let Sam do this - an unnatural tense stillness that Sam unmercifully enjoys - Dean caught between automatic protest and growing need, the bright wetness of precome blurting from the swollen head of his cock as he refuses to ask out loud. He sucks the shape of his mouth onto Dean’s thigh and licks the hang of Dean’s balls, flirts with the precome that drips down Dean’s dick, a slow unending trickle that leaves a wet trace in its wake that Sam’s tongue follows - it elicits a sound from Dean just a pitch above broken. It’s not just a blowjob, it’s a seriously unsubtle declaration of intent. If Dean hates words so much, he can have this instead. Sam chooses to ignore that he prefers it as well.

He’s close enough to giving in when Dean finally asks, not begs - Sam doesn’t want that from him, doesn’t want any part of this to be fuel for shame, asks Sam to suck him off, if not in those words - a low rush of  _Sam, Sammy, Sam, God please_  that he finally spits out, as though Sam might say no. Sam does it, gets his mouth on the thick length of Dean’s cock, harder than he’d thought to take any part of it, the teasing second nature, the fulfilment a longer road. There’s no reluctance now in Dean, no disappointment. He touches Sam’s face, his hair, the fold of his eyelids, the sweep of his forehead with hands that almost shake, thumbs away the wetness from Sam’s mouth, hunches up and shudders, eyes fixed on Sam as though if he looks away for a second, this will go. It wedges Sam’s throat open, makes Sam fight for every breath, all too aware of everything he doesn’t know, but it’s good enough. For them both, it seems. Sam’s got a tight thread of arousal in his stomach that, perversely, raises its own little spark of absent fear, as though he’s not yet processed that wanting Dean isn’t now barred by everything they are.

There’s sweat on Dean’s skin now, a shining film that spreads across his thighs, his face redder, his eyes closed as he pumps up harder, finally forgets to take it easy on Sam, forgets any promises about holding still, and comes with hardly any fanfare, and not a little shred, Sam is amused to note, of his usual overwrought care of the person he’s fucking. He doesn’t care, he’s drowned before and held his breath in tougher situations, a mouthful of almost unexpected come is small potatoes - he swallows it down, and lets Dean go.

Doesn’t stop him from teasing Dean about it, when Dean stops shaking, and Sam’s finally dragged himself further up Dean’s body, even as he can’t resist, touching just a little bit more - dragging fingers over the still thick, still warm length of Dean’s cock that just seconds ago was in Sam’s mouth.

“Yeah, well, don’t give such good blowjobs Sammy and I might remember,” Dean says, and there’s a moment where the dissonance of the thought freezes them, until laughter, the sort they only share in desperate situations where black humor is the only release, rocks through them both. Dean could get off Sam with his hands, or watch him jerk off, could let Sam fuck him, or wait and fuck Sam if he wants, or any one of the million and one things that Sam’s overactive mind and inclination to over think produces for his consideration, but there’s an apparently rigid order in Dean’s mind about tit for tat and reciprocation, because he doesn’t give Sam a chance to table anything else.

It might never seem natural to have Dean between his thighs, shy and unsure, fingers so tight on Sam’s skin that his legs will mirror his arms tomorrow - an endless mapped out expression of need - but it doesn’t mean he wants it any less. Suddenly he feels like he might die if Dean doesn’t get on with it, can’t take the teasing he’d meted out himself, doesn’t know what he says or how, just that Dean closes his eyes, and opens his mouth, takes Sam in like he can’t do anything else. Grips Sam hard, covers every inch that he can’t take in, and sucks steadily, pulls back and hollows first his mouth round the head, then his throat and brings Sam home. There’s a half rhythm to it, a disjointed snatch of a beat, warm and wet, a give and take that has Sam on edge, wanting, drives him to spread his knees and arch his back as though he still doesn’t know what he wants if not to be closer.

In an imitation of Sam’s first attempt, Dean comes back up and works the wetness of his mouth down Sam’s shaft, fingers wet and slippery as he works his way between Sam’s thighs to rub at the solid curve of his ass, suck at the heavy swing of his balls, give Sam the best view in the world of what Dean’s mouth can really do if he wants it to, battered curve of his lips as he follows the lines and length of Sam’s body without ceasing. There’s a certain surety to his hands that can, it seems, take Sam apart as well as any other machine that Dean’s ever worked on, the spread of them insisting on Sam’s pleasure.

There’s will and intent in the way Dean works, no hesitation at urging further and nearer, until Sam can’t endure another second, and, embarrassingly fast, comes into Dean’s mouth as Dean teases once too often, wet long drag of his tongue, deep suction of his mouth, the insistent stroke of his touch, that pulls the orgasm out of Sam from places he didn't even know he had one to give.

“Tastes like the sea,” Dean says, when he comes up for air, mouth bruised, eyes unsure. Sam’s not certain he means it literally, but he takes the point.

“It’s not,” he says. “I don’t belong there.” The unspoken coda is clear, and Dean’s face softens for a second. There’s so much to fix, the shadow of Lucifer hanging low and cold still over them, but finally it feels like at the end there might be peace. Outside the sea is still a dull roar, but the call is deadened by the way Dean drapes Sam like an impossibly heavy blanket, and the opening hope of something beyond the end of the world.

**Author's Note:**

> Comments/kudos always appreciated.


End file.
